Improving collaboration with a

Traffic management planning tool

Disrupting traffic management

Entire Traffic is a traffic management consultancy and creator of Road Manager. Their aim is to change the process of managing traffic globally and revolutionise how plans are created, edited and used in the field.

Tired of spending hours to create and submit traffic control plans and then have them come back printed, annotated and scanned for another round of drawing, Directors Christine Keyes and her business partner Brendan McNally thought there must be a better way.

A common operating picture was required so event planners, traffic controllers, councils and road crews could work from the same live document. The answer was to use a Google Map with drawing tools to make it possible for all parties to see and comment on the live version of the plan and have it used by crews in the field on tablets to set out the equipment.

Entire Traffic partnered with NGIS in a research and development journey to create new tools to draw scale plans over a Google Map. NGIS built Road Manager with Entire Traffic to allow locally relevant signs to be used anywhere globally.

COLLABORATION WITH CONTEXT

Google Maps API was used as the basis of Road Manager because it is device-agnostic, used all over the world and provides real world context of locations with recent date satellite imagery. Research and development gave Road Manager a tool set that would allow the thousands of accurate-to-life signs that would be used to draw plans.

On top of the context, familiarity and browser-based map that comes from Google, Road Manager also produces pick lists for road crews to help them count how many of each item they will need. Using the distance calculation from the map, a row of cones drawn as a line on the map can be counted and listed out to be picked up at the depot. This saves planners and road crews time.

CLOSING FEEDBACK LOOPS

On the familiar Google Map, the blue dot tells road crews and control rooms they’re in the right place. Director Christine Keyes said “in Sydney on New Year’s Eve there would be up to 75 traffic control plans in place, each of which needs to be set up, checked and then confirmed to the traffic management centre. With Road Manager Live this becomes a lot easier to administer. It’s an easy solution that saves time along the whole journey.”

During the planning stage, version control also becomes simple with everyone working on the latest drawing.

We’ve enjoyed the process – we were part of the team and that’s a great way to build a product. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved.

- Christine Keyes, Director, Entire Traffic

NGIS: A TRUE PARTNER

Christine Keyes said “Working with NGIS has been a true partnership. When we started we weren’t sure if it could be done. Carlos and Cameron worked with us to see if it could be done. It was a bit risky on both sides, but we had a vision and we wanted to have crack. And we did.”

NGIS helped with feasibility of the project and then went on to build it. Christine Keyes said she and Brendan felt like they were part of the team. “We’ve enjoyed the process – we were part of the team and that’s a great way to build a product. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved.”

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